Omega Optical Receive Award to Develop Multispectral Imaging for Cancer Research

The phase II SBIR award from the National Cancer Institute has been given to Omega Optical to develop a high-speed fiber optic based optical spectrum analyzer (OSA) that will be interfaced to confocal scanning microscopy and endoscopy systems. This product research is looking to aid the detection and treatment of cancer.

Spectral Molecular Imaging (SMI), of Beverly Hills, CA, will team with Omega to evaluate and further develop this new capability using animal models in conjunction with the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. This effort will accelerate development of a new class of medical endoscopes enhanced with proprietary multispectral imaging technology. The principal investigators on the project are Dr. Gary Carver, Director of Research at Omega Optical, and Dr. Daniel L. Farkas, Chairman and CEO of SMI.

The new OSA generates spectra in microseconds, and will provide a cost-effective clinic-friendly multispectral option to confocal optical scanning systems. This new technology will enable the early in-vivo detection and treatment of cancer at the cellular level. Fast multispectral confocal mapping has great promise for imaging cancer at the cellular level. Existing technologies have not combined sufficient spatial, spectral, and temporal resolution in one instrument. Spectrometer acquisition speeds are not fast enough to generate multispectral data at rates that avoid spatial impairments due to the movements of living biological samples.

The new grant was awarded by the National Cancer Institute within the National Institutes of Health, under the federal government's Small Business Innovation Research Initiative - a program designed to speed the translation of important technology from the laboratory to the clinic marketplace. This is a Phase II award, granted upon successful completion of a Phase I feasibility study at Omega Optical

earlier this year. The new Omega/SMI development program, scheduled for two years, focuses on completion of a prototype fast multispectral endoscope and its preclinical testing. This latter activity is scheduled at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where Dr. Farkas was, until very recently, Vice-chairman for Research and Professor in the Department of Surgery.

"Today's endoscopes", explained Dr. Farkas, "while highly successful and widely used, provide a limited picture of the areas under investigation. We expect our new class of medical endoscopes to enable collecting information about human tissue signatures with a speed and resolution surpassing anything currently available on the market. When completed, our instruments will provide surgeons, in real time (that is during intervention) with the sort of diagnostic information that is only available today after slow lab tests on biopsied tissues. We believe this functionality should substantially enhance the ability of physicians to detect and treat a range of diseases of the gastro-intestinal and respiratory tract, including colon and lung cancers.”

The Omega/SMI development team intends to rely on fast fiber-optic wavelength selection tools developed for the telecommunications industry - a technology not previously applied in biomedical imaging. This teaming of optical experts from the telecom and biomedical sectors was viewed quite favorably by the NIH. When achieved, the resulting new performance would ultimately enable earlier detection of cancer and other diseases, as well as treatment. "We expect," added Dr. Farkas, "that biomedical researchers could use this new technology to catalog more extensive libraries of spectral images showing tumor growth, angiogenesis and subsequent metastasis. We believe that these enhanced libraries will lead to important new applications in surgical pathology, oncology labs, and clinics."

The estimated world market for endoscopic imaging and diagnostic products is well in excess of $10 billion per year. This project complements Omega’s business plan (which already addresses the fluorescence market), and complements SMI’s business plan (which already includes multispectral endoscopic applications). The resulting multispectral endoscopy/microscopy products will incorporate filters and software for detecting the spectral signatures of a given disease.